1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an image processing apparatus and a control method for the image processing apparatus. In particular, embodiments of the present invention relate to an art of selecting a suitable one of plural energy saving modes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2005-215316 discloses a configuration in which in order to automatically carry out a suitable setting of an energy saving operation mode, the number of times of copying operations are counted for each unit period of time, and an energy saving operation mode to be assigned is automatically determined for each unit period of time according to the thus-counted frequency of times of the copying operations. In this configuration, the energy saving operation mode is automatically determined. However, an optimum setting may not necessarily be achieved in some cases.
In a technical field of business machines including a copier, a multifunction peripheral, and so forth, various functions have been introduced for the purpose of saving users' costs. As one of the various functions, an energy saving function of providing a mode of saving power consumption exists. In this energy saving function, the states of the power supplied to devices (for example, a monitor, an image forming engine, and so forth) included in a business machine are changed, and thus, power consumption is reduced. As specific examples of changing the states of the power supplied include, for example, controlling the temperature of the devices, turning on/off the power supply of the devices, and forth.
In such an energy saving function of the business machine, problems, described below, may occur. It is noted that although an image forming apparatus is used as one example of a business machine below, the problems may not be unique to the image forming apparatus, and may be common to business machines, information processing apparatuses, image processing apparatuses, and so forth, which have power saving functions.
A first problem is that to set setting values for power saving modes may be troublesome. In many cases, a user of an image forming apparatus may set setting values (i.e., a time at which the image forming apparatus is to enter a power saving mode, a timer value to be counted before the image forming apparatus actually enters the power saving mode, or such) for each one of plural energy saving states.
As another problem, for a case where setting values for power saving modes are set automatically, it may not be easy to previously determine suitable setting values which are used to automatically set the setting values for the power saving modes. For example, a certain function of an image forming apparatus cannot be used when the image forming apparatus enters an energy saving mode. Therefore, when the certain function of the image forming apparatus is used, the image forming apparatus is caused to return from the energy saving mode to a regular mode. In this regard, very large power may be consumed when the image forming apparatus is caused to return from the energy saving mode to the regular mode. For example, a fixing unit used in an electrophotographic system by which an image having been transferred to paper is fixed by using heat and pressure may consume very large power when being started up along with returning of the image forming apparatus from the energy saving mode to the regular mode. Therefore, power consumption may increase when the image forming apparatus enters the energy saving mode each time the image forming apparatus being used is finished, for example, in a time zone in which the frequency of use of the image forming apparatus is high. Thus, it may be not be easy to determine the optimum setting value for the energy saving mode.
It is noted that the setting values for the energy saving modes may include, as mentioned above, for example, a time at which an image forming apparatus is caused to enter the energy saving mode, a timer value to be counted before the image forming apparatus actually enters the energy saving mode, or such. Further, for an image forming apparatus having plural energy saving modes, it may not be obvious which one of the plural energy saving modes is to be selected for each time zone.